Beat notes: Warming center could help alleviate homelessness

Jan. 13, 2013

Written by

Amanda Seitz

Daily Herald Media

Editor's note: Beat notes are filed weekly by Wausau Daily Herald reporters discussing events on their beats and observations they have made while reporting.

The Wausau City Council approved Tuesday a permit for Catholic Charities, a Wausau nonprofit, to open a downtown warming center.

Those behind the efforts — officials from the United Way of Marathon County, the Wausau Police Department and Catholic Charities — had all told me for weeks about the dozens of homeless people in Wausau who needed somewhere to go on wintry nights.

There’s nothing like actually seeing the need for yourself. The next day I got my chance.

As I took a mid-morning stroll Wednesday from my favorite downtown coffee shop to my home, I walked by City Hall. Right there, under the shadows of the city’s municipal building, was a man digging through a trash can. He plucked out a paper bag and a stem of white, plastic flowers.

For a second, as I walked pass the man, we made eye contact.

“I need to put the flowers back,” he stammered. “I think I know where they go; I need to put them back.”

I told him nobody would mind if he kept the flowers but he was adamant that he knew where the plastic flowers were once planted.

This man could be one of the estimated 120 homeless men and women in Marathon County who can now seek help from the new downtown warming center.

How did this man end up digging through a trash can on a Wednesday morning? What is his story?

Those are questions Daily Herald Media hopes to answer as, during the coming weeks, we provide in-depth coverage of efforts by the United Way’s newly formed Housing and Homelessness Coalition to end homelessness.

Daily Herald Media reporters will be on scene to interview dozens of volunteers who will work at the warming center for the first time on Feb. 1. On Jan. 31, volunteers of the coalition will take a late-night, countywide count of all the men and women who are living here without shelter. Daily Herald Media will be right there, too, talking to the people sleeping on the streets.

Someone’s son or mother, a veteran or a college graduate, is living in this county without a home. We plan to put a face, name and story to the people you pass by on Wausau’s streets.

Amanda Seitz covers the city of Wausau and Marathon County for Daily Herald Media. Have a suggestion for a story Amanda should be chasing? Contact her at aseitz@wdhprint.com and follow her on Twitter @amandaseitz1.